Season 9 Episode #2 Language Shame, Identity, and the Power of Salsa with Rodney Eric López

What happens when language fails—but culture still speaks?

In this powerful episode of The Cultural Curriculum Chat Podcast™, host Jebeh Edmunds sits down with educator, artist, and nonprofit leader Rodney Eric López to explore the intersection of language, identity, dance, and belonging.

Rodney shares his journey from arts educator to community leader and reflects on his experience being featured in the acclaimed documentary Mad Hot Ballroom.

Together, they discuss:

✨ Language shame among second and third generation immigrants
 ✨ The role of Salsa and social dance in cultural identity
 ✨ The importance of play and the arts in education
 ✨ The intersection of race and language in the Latino community
 ✨ Parenting and preserving culture across generations

Rodney also shares insights from his forthcoming memoir I Don’t Speak Spanish, but I Understand Everything When I’m Dancing, a deeply personal reflection on culture, language, and self-discovery.

This episode is a powerful reminder that culture can be spoken through movement, music, and community.

Learn more about Rodney Eric López here: Rodney Eric Lopez Enterprises

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Cultural Curriculum Chat Podcast, the show where we explore culture, identity, education, and the stories that shape our communities. I'm your host, Jebba Edmonds, educator, cultural competency consultant, and author. And each week we have powerful conversations with educators, artists, and leaders who are helping us understand culture and community in deeper ways. Today's guest is someone whose work beautifully connects dance, language, and identity. Rodney Eric Lopez is an accomplished educator, artist, and nonprofit leader who has dedicated his career to building bridges between culture, creativity, and community. He is the CEO of Rodney Eric Lopez Enterprises and was featured in the acclaimed documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, which introduced audiences around the world to the transformative power of dance education. Rodney is also the author of the forthcoming memoir, I Don't Speak Spanish, but I understand everything when I'm dancing, where he explores identity, language shame, and how cultural expression, especially dance, can become a powerful form of communication. Rodney, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

It is so good to be with you. I can feel the energy already. Thank you for that uh beautiful introduction, and I'm very happy to be with you and have this conversation.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Oh, you're welcome. I'm telling you, before we started, you know, listeners and viewers, like we already have that dance language, like, yes, you're a dancer, I'm a dancer. We just get into it, get into our our form and spot and and get ready to go. And I love this about your story when I was researching. You know, you built your career at the intersection of arts, education, and community leadership. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and how dance became such an important part of your life?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

It's an important place to start because my career didn't begin in dance. I came to that later in my career, a little bit later, and uh and as an a little bit older. My first career was in public relations. I started in the nonprofit space, in healthcare, uh, economic development, and then eventually corporate public relations. I was a uh journalism major in college and I and I had designs on being the Puerto Rican Brian Gumble. Uh, that's who I wanted to be growing up, but all of my internships were in public relations and marketing. So my my career began in that space, and it wasn't until a few years in that I uh, you know, I met somebody, I met a young lady with whom I was enamored, and uh, and and and I followed her like a puppy uh to Sansa. Again, she was a professional Sansa dancer. Uh, she was also a social worker. That's what that was her day job, but she was a professional Sansa dancer. We met and I was smitten, and uh, and we started hanging out, and I and she was in this world that I had no idea existed. Now, uh, being Puerto Rican, being born and raised in New York uh to parents from Puerto Rico, Sansa was in my uh in my upbringing, right? It was in my home. My father was a musician for a time. So Sansa was a foreign to me, but when it's your parents' music, it's not cool, right? So I listened to you know whatever was playing on top 40 radio growing up, but but it wasn't until I reached this stage of my life in my early 20s that salsa started to become real for me, not through the music initially, but more through the dance, right? Through this art form, through this social dance that was just exciting. It was new. This was the you know, the mid-90s where we saw this new wave of salsa being introduced and expanding in New York City. Uh, what you know, what I call the second generation of salsa, because there was a mambo generation in the 40s, 50s, and 60s that got sort of uh I'll just say sideline, really. But it just like like like culture does, it goes in waves. And so I started dancing first for fun, uh, first for the joy of it. Then I got the opportunity to start teaching, first as a volunteer, then as a staff uh uh instructor at a great dance studio called Dance in New York City, and then eventually as a teaching artist with dancing classrooms. And so slowly I left this career that I had started uh because while it was intellectually stimulating, it wasn't particularly gratifying personally. And I started this new career, first as a dancer, then as a dance teacher, then as a teaching artist, and then eventually as a leader of this organization that brought ballroom dancing to children, bringing all of my skill sets together in one place. So that's kind of the short version of the story, but essentially it began with a relationship that it has continued with me understanding how social dance can be central to relationships, how social dance can inspire and foster the kind of community, connection, and confidence that that we need to face some of these social and emotional challenges of ours.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

Well, that is so so profound, Rodney, because you're right. When you are doing that social dance and how you said too, like the Mambo, it was sidelined, kind of like, okay, that's the older generation, but how the younger generation, like yourselves, came and rethought it, reshaped it, and put it into your own and and and had like a rebirth of how you all interpreted it growing up. And like you said, generationally, like it's always been in you, but it was kind of like the perfect time for you to revisit that part of your life and and grow from there. Oh my goodness. And when you're saying journalism major is in me too, I want to be the African Oprah. Yes, you see.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

We were meant to have this conversation today.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

I'm telling you, I'm telling you, yes, this is so, so neat. And when you talk about, let's talk more about that social component with uh salsa dancing, because like you said, you know, especially in this time, we find ourselves very isolated, find, you know, very like, uh, this is my thing. And, you know, do you feel like we need to have that um resurgence back in community and dance and that grounding?

SPEAKER_00 7:00

I want to say yes for multiple reasons. Yeah. And and I want to start, I want to start, and I and I address this, the book, when I talk about particularly what this has meant, what what my work and the work of other people in my space, what that impact has meant for children, particularly in the school system. But it's really for all of us. Uh, it's just that children's needs tend to be very acute because their minds and their personalities are still in development. Um, but I'll say this for a couple of reasons. And I want to start by saying I am not a technophobe. I believe in the power of technology, I believe that technology has a lot to offer us. Technology is allowing you and I to have this conversation right now and to share with your audience later. But but technology has its limits and technology has its its drawbacks. And so I think that since we've seen an acceleration of screen time, particularly among younger people, uh a withdrawaling into digital virtual uh spaces, that's exciting. There's there's a lot of that that's good about that, but I it the data is in our children and young people and adolescents have been negatively affected by this in their in their social and their emotional development. So anything that we can do on, and I believe anything that we can do to counteract the negative aspects of technology, screen time, the digital age, I think can only help uh enhance and encourage our common and shared humanity. So so I believe that social dance in particular, although the arts in general, I believe I believe the arts need greater emphasis on this degree and going forward. However, social dance in particular um does something unique. It allows us to not only move our bodies, but to make a physical connection with people. We go through this awkwardness of what it means to hold somebody, to touch somebody, to move with somebody. That's exactly the antidote to the hours and hours and hours we're spending on our screens. So that's number one. Number two is that the COVID pandemic shot a heart right through this art form. Because while other art forms were able to transfer to Zoom into virtual platforms, really social dance could. I mean, people tried, I tried, we all tried. But social dance is one of those things that you simply cannot do six feet apart, right? You have to be in connection, you have to be in proximity, right? And so COVID taught me and everybody in my uh sort of in my field that oh my god, we can lose this, right? Like we are one trauma crisis away from losing one of these things that uh creates connection in this very human way that we have had over our entire history of certain things in one and so uh so I believe that uh that the dance and the arts, but dance in particular, because it's it's I say dance is the most uh democratic of art forums because it's mediated. I don't need the tool, I don't need a medium to experience it, it's a body. We all have a body, we can all use it in this way. So so I believe it's essential to what it means to be human, and I believe it's essential to what it means to be human in community with others. It's absolutely indispensable.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

I love that. Oh my gosh, and you're so right. You know, I was a former classroom teacher, and you know, just to get our bodies moving, it was like, yeah, let's put some music on and dance break, you know, and stuff. And and and you're right, it is, it's that inherent human connection. And like you said, with community, you can't do that six feet apart. You need to touch and move together in unison or not in unison. That's also a language, too, of like, oh, you're doing your okay. I gotta follow your lead, or you know, and and go from there. I just I love this. I love this. Now, let's kind of switch gears to, you know, you being uh in an immigrant family from Puerto Rico originally, and there's a lot of language shame. And I think a lot of listeners and even educators are are really curious about what language shame means with cultural and um cultural groups in immigrant communities, especially among second and third generation, you know, immigrants, you know, some people might say things like, oh, you don't sound like us, or you know, you're too Americanized, or you don't even know the language, you know. What are what is your take on that? And how does language shame show up in our immigrant families?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

It's a big question with a big answer. Uh, and and the reason why I wrote this book, because I felt like the talks I was giving on it were insufficient to process the depth of the feeling that people in my audiences were. And I felt like I needed something to address it. But uh, but for the purposes of our conversation, I'll I'll try to sum up that. So there's a couple of things that are at play here, right? And there are different members or subsets of our communities that are affected in different ways, so there isn't one blanket experience around this, right? We're not among this in any sense. Yes, so let me say a couple of things. First, I want to say that the uh the book is uh written from a US context, because I'm born and raised in the Bronx, New York City, in the United States, uh and other countries, you know, whether in uh the Western hemisphere, the eastern, like it doesn't matter where you're from, uh other countries deal with the difference in different ways. Yes, but I'm writing from a particularly US context. And from my perspective, the United States since its inception has been an assimilationist project, right? Meaning that once uh you know, once our uh founding fathers, so to speak, have to put that in context, right? Yeah, yeah. But but but the common history that we learn about the the people and the institutions that were created at the founding of the United States as a government and as a nation, uh, it has had varied relationships with people from other countries. There were periods in our history when we were welcome of people from other countries, uh, and we encouraged immigration and we encouraged diversity. And then there were other periods in our history when that was uh restricted and that where there was higher levels of xenophobia and higher levels of distrust of people from other nations. But what I can say with a great degree of confidence is that since the middle, the early to mid-20th century, we have seen uh we have seen immigration policy shift and we have seen it be uh in general particularly uh uh uh skewed against black and brown people and people from black and brown nations. There has been this this uh uh bending over backwards many times to to increase and encourage European immigration, and maybe less so uh from the Caribbean, it's uh Central America, South America, an African nation. And so it's a fixed bag, which means we wherever we're coming from, we're coming for with a particular narrative about what it means to be American and what values inform the way we show up. Now Puerto Rico is in a very unique uh position because unlike anywhere else, any other immigrant who comes to the United States, with the exception of people who are coming as refugees, because those folks are are leaving traumatic situations. But for folks who are electing to come to the United States, typically it's because they want better lives for themselves, their children, they want to access the economic opportunities that are here in the United States that have been here traditionally. Puerto Rico's in this very unique place because Puerto Rico has existed in a colonial relationship with the United States since its uh since its overtaking in 1898. And since 1898, uh when uh Puerto Rico was a spoiler war and the Spanish-American War, uh Puerto Rico has had this very fraught relationship with the United States, and for decades was seen as backwards, was seen as having people that could not govern themselves, and frankly, were dealt with with very racist attitudes from the European, uh rather from the US governments and the governors that were installed in the places. And so uh it wasn't until the 1950s when Puerto Rico was granted uh a sense of autonomy. Uh, they were allowed to develop their own constitution and their their status changed to what is called the Commonwealth status, right? Or free associated state. And so this allowed some level of self-governance in Puerto Rico, but Puerto Rico still does have a vote for the presidency of the United States. It still does not have representation in Congress, and there are ongoing debates to this day about what stats should Puerto Rico have. Should it be, should it continue to be in this state, should it become a state in the Union, or should it be an independent nation, the nations that surrounded the Caribbean? I'm running out of breath because that was 150 years of history in a couple of minutes.

SPEAKER_03 17:31

To learn so much already, yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

And I hope that you know I hope that your audience appreciates this. Yes, because Puerto Ricans in particular have lived in this in this very difficult space of uh and and and by the way, this is by design because they were policies put in place after this change in the 1950s to actually encourage people to leave Puerto Rico on the come state side to take uh working uh working class and and factory and medial jobs uh and to uh and to leave their island home. Um so many people left Puerto Rico, not necessarily because they wanted to, but because economics forced them to. So here you are uh you know coming from your Caribbean nation to cities in the American Northeast that are cold, that have snow, that have rain, that you you know you did not experience before living in the Caribbean. And not only do you have to adjust to an inhospitable petrol climate, you've got to adjust to an inhospitable social climate where you are seen as unwelcome, where you are seen as uh uh you know less than and foreign in the sense, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Have a tremendous sense of pride of your home and where you're from. So, like many other immigrant communities, although Puerto Ricans are immigrants technically, they are migrants because we are we have American citizenship. You're Americans, yeah. But but uh but still take on the same characteristics, the same social dynamics as as many people from immigrated from other nations. And there's tension in what does it mean to be Puerto Rican in this context? Well, in addition to bringing your your sense of religion, your food, uh your music, your your whatever, you're also bringing your language, and that language happens to be Spanish. And so that there, those first generations have real decisions to make about whether they were going to, like everybody else who comes here from somewhere else, they had to make real decisions. Were they gonna go all in on the American project and say, well, no, our first priorities is to learn English and to and to speak English well so we can participate in the economy? Or am I gonna take a slightly more, I'll use the term militant approach, and say, no, no, no, Spanish is part of who I am. And I'm not gonna let go of that. I'm gonna always speak Spanish, regardless of whether my English improves or not. But now you have children, right? And now children have to navigate this system. And what social linguistics teaches us is that it's the second generation that is caught in between, right? Like I, you know, I have to navigate, I may have to be the person who translates for my parents, grandparents at schools or healthcare situations or other situations. And now I'm bored in this land and I have attention. And now those people have children. And what social linguistics also teaches us is that by the third generation, the whole language is pretty much gone.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Because of your growing acculturation and assimilation uh to your to your new land. So I've given you a very long answer, but where's okay?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

My parents were born and raised in Puerto Rico, they their first language was Spanish. And while everybody in my extended family had the exact same experience I did, uh many have, and basically, parents made the conscious decision because of their experiences having to appear from Puerto Rico, being discriminated against and feeling isolated and being being made to feel less than that. They did not want their son to have that experience. And so uh they made the decision consciously. You're gonna speak English is gonna be your first language, that's the one that's gonna be uh where you excel, and we are going to intentionally not speak Spanish to each other, although they spoke it to each other at the home. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Spanish was always in the background but it was not the language that they communicated with for it to be that creates two interesting projects oh yes yes problem number one is certain people make fun of you because well what Puerto Rican doesn't speak Spanish if you're Puerto Rican or Mexican or Colombian or Dominican you're just supposed to speak Spanish you're expected to speak Spanish by other Puerto Ricans as well as by white folks so you go into spaces and you're oh they look at you and that you people make assumptions about you they see your last name is Lopez must speak Spanish well actually I don't my parents didn't teach me oh and you get that dip like yes that oh those people them yeah oh it drives me nuts yeah so then I I said okay well you know after you know there were there were there were there were a few years where that was really bothersome so in high school I decided to take Spanish great so uh you know I had a lot of catching up to do but I took a couple of years of Spanish I actually saw incredible improvement in my ability to speak Spanish but here's problem number two oh well you sound like a great because more Spanish sounds like it comes out of a textbook like it comes so I lived in this damned if you do damned if you don't existence and so I've carried for most of my adult life a lot of shame around being caught in these two places right like not being not feeling Puerto Rican enough because I couldn't speak Spanish and then not feeling Puerto Rican enough because I couldn't speak it well once I learned how to speak there are very real emotional consequences for carrying that shame. So I spent seven chapters of this book addressing how that shows up in a different context. So I've been going on a long time like it's all good it's the kind of it it's this issue requires that kind of long look at how people show up in this country and the forces the push and pull forces that that that affect people's relationship to not only their language but their heritage yes and thank you for sharing that oh I can't wait to get this book and it will be in the show notes for people to order it because even that snapshot that you shared with us the history of Puerto Rico the relationship or lack thereof with our government and just that tight rope of how Puerto Ricans have to um survive in this country.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

And like you said too your parents did that as a means to survival they didn't want you to have that trauma that they faced to survive day to day in this new new country it's it wasn't their homeland you know it was you know completely a huge cultural change and shift and you being their child are like no we don't want you to have those obstacles to that degree that we did. And I like how you even touched on this too Rodney of when people see you, they already have their perceptions about you. And then that dip in their tone like oh it's like what I'm right here. You know like but that thank you for sharing that because there's so many I know second third generation immigrants that are listening can also relate no matter where they come from it's that oh well you know I already have my preconceived notions of how this group of people should be and how they should move in this world and in this country and you're not giving me that you know and and and you're sitting here going but I'm still a human being I still have my experiences I still have value to share you know and and that to me once you said that I was like yes so many of us can relate to that and thank you for sharing and being vulnerable about that because a lot of people just assume again that being Puerto Rican or being you know from your community out in the East Coast that you know when you see the Puerto Rican flag you know it's like oh we all have the same thing and I love how you shared we're not a monolith we're all very complex within that group oh my gosh now here's my other yeah go ahead say one other thing for that thank you for affirming you know uh affirming me but the you know I I called the book I don't speak Spanish but I understand everything when I'm dancing and we'll get into the dancing piece more in a minute yeah yeah but you know when I was you know this book was born out of presentations I was giving on this topic and although it's it's coming from the I perspective Puerto Rican Spanish New York all of those things what I found was people who were Chinese people who were Indian people who were Haitian people from a variety of backgrounds that were finding uh themselves in this story so this could be I don't speak Wolof this could be I don't speak Haitian Creole this could be I don't speak Mandarin Chinese this could be I don't speak Gujarati this could be if you're from somewhere else and you are trying to navigate sort of the United States and especially if you're doing it over multiple generations you are going to have some connection to this story and uh and you might feel strongly about heritage language and it must be spoken and preserved uh or you might not be the the the the the goal I'm trying to reach here is I want people to let go of their shame around this and find these alternative I just wanted to follow up on which thank you oh yeah because I was gonna oh yeah all the things this is amazing and I and I also like that too how you even shared that you know in in different groups too have the same feeling of saying that's me even though it's from your lens there's so many people that can relate and when you were sharing it's like yeah that's me there's some dialects that my parents didn't teach me because it was like well we're here you know and you know and let's just keep moving we're here we're we're we're trying to get into this culture of opportunity and and again the same thinking of you know survival. We don't want our children and the generations after to have as much of a hardship from us that just got here. So oh this is so good. Now let's talk about dance and play in because it's so powerful in education you talked about you know how you know teaching students you know the power of social social dancing with salsa you know how can schools bring more of this into their learning environments so I think so there's a couple of things there.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah yeah I think first of all it requires a a wholesome not wholesome holistic holistic yeah approach to to what it means to be educated what does that mean what does it mean to invite students to school even more strongly require students to be in school right yes but require students to be in school and for many of those who spend 12 years of work in the system what does it mean to educate them now listen I there's a million opinions on this I am not an arts educator and I am an educator I'm not an educational historian I'm not an educational scholar but what I do know is that um children need to learn in multiple ways people have spoken about multiple intelligences for decades now yes we know that that's it it's almost taken as gospel at this point that every child learned and wrote learning that every child learned and that not every child should be taught to a test right we the data is in this is not necessarily in the best interest of best interest of the child and nor is it in the best interest of our nation because we are not necessarily uh uh having the best educational outcomes in the United States every global poll shows that the United States is often nowhere even in the top 10 in terms of educational right so what we're doing ain't working yes and and over the last generation we have doubled down on this high stakes testing and all of this so I don't have all the answers but I have one answer and that is that arts have to be seen as a as essential to learning not supplemental to it. Yes and listen reading writing and arithmetic are absolutely crucial skills our kids need to be literate they need to they they need to know their numbers they need to know how to learn and there are lots of ways to teach that there are lots of ways to teach literacy there's lots of ways to teach numeracy lots of ways to teach writing um and I feel like the arts especially as someone who has advocated for arts education of it is often considered expendable disposable yes we would love to have it but yeah we don't have enough budget but we we experience budget cuts I gotta get this reading curriculum work. I I empathize with educators I empathize with district superintendents and commissioners of education they are in many cases they're doing the best that they can they're trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents they are given the resources that they need to actively empower their teachers and so I get it it it is it is and so there isn't work but there has been a steady decline of arts education uh you know over the last few decades that's for sure that we know and the data shows that children who have a more robust arts experience in their K through 12 experience just do better. They do better socially do better emotionally do better academically so what can we do as educators but not just as educators as as policymakers as funders uh to uh to create spaces where children can learn and where children can learn in creative ways um there's so much literature on this uh but what we do know is that children thrive when they move their body needs to lose there is they there it there is uh one person in the voice of this podcast who does not perform better after having a movement break right we we all we cannot sit at attention more than and even less so than in the digital age we cannot sit and be effective for more than 45 60 minutes at a time have to get up and walk and get a cup of coffee take a walk around the block if we know this as adults why are we expecting our children to sit for 45 minutes at a clip seven periods a day and expect positive educational audience it's more than just a 20 minute recess. We have to think about we have to think about how arts mindfulness and all these other things integrate into the holistic experience say one last thing about this um I know people bristle at the at the uh at the comparison between the United States and places like Finland because Finland is a very different place than the United States and it's it's much more homogeneous and what have you and I get it's not an apples to apples comparison so I don't want to go down that but oh but they don't even start their kids until a year after we start our kids in school and they let those kids like roam through the forest for a year because they have a relationship with nature before you even sit them in cloud. So um you know we don't all have forests to send our kids into saying that's what we should do.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

But there's something in our industrial age based approach to education that's clearly yes so true Rodney and you're right you know even though we don't have forests to run to we've they're moving their bodies are constantly moving yeah and um I just this has just been an amazing topic I could talk to you all day but I have a couple things before we go um any advice would you give to parents when it comes to helping their children embrace their own identity what an important question and it was probably the second the second most important reason I wrote this book there are two chapters on parenting the last two chapters one is on parenting in general and the last one is specifically about father because as a dad fathers have unique responsibilities with their children but parents if you can hear this and you're struggling with this it's important for you to know that this is not your problem to solve alone language is learned not based on the good intentions of a parent or two language is learned language is learned through practice immersion and most importantly play if I'm stressed out about getting something right my nervous system will tense up and I will have a block so if you are someone who was raised like I was raised without your heritage language and you're feeling some kind of shame around it let it go because your parents were carrying things that prevented them from passing on their heritage language to you.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Maybe you've had a conversation with them about it. Maybe you haven't if you haven't and they're blessed to still be with you I would ask them about why you still have them if you are a parent and you do speak your native language or I should say your heritage but you've had trouble passing it on to your children either because you don't feel like you have an extended community or because your children have rejected it and they've said no I don't want to because kids can make that choice you you can already see from just these two examples that this is complex. It's layered and it's balanced and it's by design our our country there are 30 states in the United States that have English only laws of books right like like this this is and and I'm not bashing more English because English is the label front of our time but but yes your child you and your children and everybody should speak of the educational system the the the the the the policy systems the healthcare systems the commerce systems the privilege being fluent in English and finish bilingualism or multilingualism right as an asset. That's not the case in other parts of the world necessarily so you are climbing an uphill battle you're rolling a stone uphill if you're feeling like you let your children down because they don't have your your heritage or you don't because your parents teach it to you.

SPEAKER_03 38:59

Maybe they made a choice our parents did to withhold it or maybe they tried and just didn't have a support because they had and they didn't have to be ascended family grandma and Ape and uncles and aunties and other people who could could support you because guess what it does take a village it's it does take a village to raise a child and to translate that a language so remember that remember that if you do want to learn either you as an adult or if you want to foster a learning language environment for your child insist on play and insist on celebrating mistakes because it's when we feel like we can't make mistakes that sense up we give up yes that's the partney it's like you're already overthinking the process already when when you when it doesn't go your way or doesn't work out then you're like uh I give up put my hands up we're just gonna keep moving somewhere other direction oh my goodness Rodney where this has just been so amazing to chat with you I feel like I've known you my whole life with dance and language and I'm like yeah my parents too and grandma lived with us you know and still it's just amazing.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

So where can my listeners and viewers find you and your book and all things Rodney Eric Lopez in your in your business I appreciate all of the opportunity to share so all things Rodney Eric Lopez is at my website uh rodneyericlopez.com uh it'll be in your show notes yes and yes it will be website sounds like it's spelled R-O-D-N-Y-E-R-I-C L-E-Z. Uh and if that was too fast just check out the show. Um and and on that website uh you will also find the information about the book on how you can get it uh and I would invite everybody who hears this to both sign up for my book list so that you can hear about uh learn more about the book and events and things surrounding the book and also just sign up for my general newsletter uh if you'd like to hear uh you know musings from Rodney Lopez.

SPEAKER_03 41:13

Uh also uh this book will be available as of April 13th so you'll be able to find it on Amazon and all your uh traditional booksellers online uh but I'm very excited about uh sharing this book and sharing this message message with the world but please sign up for my newsletter please find me uh website would love to be really would love to build a community of conversation around this because it's a topic that gets under that is underappreciated in our communities and I think uh given given our political climate we really need to have clear clear conversations around what it means to be in the United States what it means to be American and what it means to be from the places you're from and language is central to all of them it is oh my gosh thank you so much Rodney this conversation was so powerful you just filled my cup today you he just your work reminds us that culture is not just something we inherit it's something we express we move through it we speak it and we live it every single day so thank you for joining us and if you enjoyed this conversation folks please subscribe and share to the Culture Curriculum Chat podcast with a friend and if you're an educator looking for culturally responsive tools be sure to check out my multicultural lesson plans and my professional development mini courses on jebbaedmonds.com and you can find those resources as well in the show notes and we'll also have all of Rodney's uh work in the show notes as well where you can continue to walk along and dance along with his journey oh thank you so much Rodney for being on the show and I'll see you thank you and I'll see you guys here same time same place bye bye